2. Tutorial

This tutorial will teach you how to create and run Charliecloud images, using both examples included with the source code as well as new ones you create from scratch.

This tutorial assumes that: (a) Charliecloud is in your path, including Charliecloud’s fully unprivileged image builder ch-image and (b) Charliecloud is installed under /usr/local. (If the second assumption isn’t true, you will just need to modify some paths.)

If you want to use Docker to build images, see the FAQ.

Note

Shell sessions throughout this documentation will use the prompt $ to indicate commands executed natively on the host and > for commands executed in a container.

2.1. 90 seconds to Charliecloud

This section is for the impatient. It shows you how to quickly build and run a “hello world” Charliecloud container. If you like what you see, then proceed with the rest of the tutorial to understand what is happening and how to use Charliecloud for your own applications.

2.1.1. Using a SquashFS image

The preferred workflow uses our internal SquashFS mounting code. Your sysadmin should be able to tell you if this is linked in.

$ cd /usr/local/share/doc/charliecloud/examples/hello
$ ch-image build --force .
inferred image name: hello
[...]
grown in 4 instructions: hello
$ ch-convert hello /var/tmp/hello.sqfs
input:   ch-image  hello
output:  squash    /var/tmp/hello.sqfs
packing ...
Parallel mksquashfs: Using 8 processors
Creating 4.0 filesystem on /var/tmp/hello.sqfs, block size 65536.
[=============================================|] 10411/10411 100%
[...]
done
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- echo "I’m in a container"
I’m in a container

2.1.2. Using a directory image

If not, you can create image in plain directory format instead. Most of this tutorial uses SquashFS images, but you can adapt it analogously to this section.

$ cd /usr/local/share/doc/charliecloud/examples/hello
$ ch-image build --force .
inferred image name: hello
[...]
grown in 4 instructions: hello
$ ch-convert hello /var/tmp/hello
input:   ch-image  hello
output:  dir       /var/tmp/hello
exporting ...
done
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello -- echo "I’m in a container"
I’m in a container

Note

You can run perfectly well out of /tmp, but because it is bind-mounted automatically, the image root will then appear in multiple locations in the container’s filesystem tree. This can cause confusion for both users and programs.

2.2. Getting help

All the executables have decent help and can tell you what version of Charliecloud you have (if not, please report a bug). For example:

$ ch-run --help
Usage: ch-run [OPTION...] NEWROOT CMD [ARG...]

Run a command in a Charliecloud container.
[...]
$ ch-run --version
0.26

Man pages for all commands are provided in this documentation (see table of contents at left) as well as via man(1).

2.3. Pull an image

To start, let’s obtain a container image that someone else has already built. The containery way to do this is the pull operation, which means to move an image from a remote repository into local storage of some kind.

First, browse the Docker Hub repository of official AlmaLinux images. Note the list of tags; this is a partial list of image versions that are available. We’ll use the tag “8”.

Use the Charliecloud program ch-image to pull this image to Charliecloud’s internal storage directory:

$ ch-image pull almalinux:8
pulling image:    almalinux:8
requesting arch:  amd64
manifest list: downloading: 100%
manifest: downloading: 100%
config: downloading: 100%
layer 1/1: 3239c63: downloading: 68.2/68.2 MiB (100%)
pulled image: adding to build cache
flattening image
layer 1/1: 3239c63: listing
validating tarball members
layer 1/1: 3239c63: changed 42 absolute symbolic and/or hard links to relative
resolving whiteouts
layer 1/1: 3239c63: extracting
image arch: amd64
done
$ ch-image list
almalinux:8

Images come in lots of different formats; ch-run can use directories and SquashFS archives. For this example, we’ll use SquashFS. We use the command ch-convert to create a SquashFS image from the image in internal storage, then run it:

$ ch-convert almalinux:8 almalinux.sqfs
$ ch-run almalinux.sqfs -- /bin/bash
> pwd
/
> ls
bin  ch  dev  etc  home  lib  lib64  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run
sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var
> cat /etc/redhat-release
AlmaLinux release 8.7 (Stone Smilodon)
> exit

What do these commands do?

  1. Create a SquashFS-format image (ch-convert ...).

  2. Create a running container using that image (ch-run almalinux.sqfs).

  3. Stop processing ch-run options (--). (This is standard notation for UNIX command line programs.)

  4. Run the program /bin/bash inside the container, which starts an interactive shell, where we enter a few commands and then exit, returning to the host.

2.4. Containers are not special

Many folks would like you to believe that containers are magic and special (especially if they want to sell you their container product). This is not the case. To demonstrate, we’ll create a working container image using standard UNIX tools.

Many Linux distributions provide tarballs containing installed base images, including Alpine. We can use these in Charliecloud directly:

$ wget -O alpine.tar.gz 'https://github.com/alpinelinux/docker-alpine/blob/v3.16/x86_64/alpine-minirootfs-3.16.3-x86_64.tar.gz?raw=true'
$ tar tf alpine.tar.gz | head -10
./
./root/
./var/
./var/log/
./var/lock/
./var/lock/subsys/
./var/spool/
./var/spool/cron/
./var/spool/cron/crontabs
./var/spool/mail

This tarball is what’s called a “tarbomb”, so we need to provide an enclosing directory to avoid making a mess:

$ mkdir alpine
$ cd alpine
$ tar xf ../alpine.tar.gz
$ ls
bin  etc   lib    mnt  proc  run   srv  tmp  var
dev  home  media  opt  root  sbin  sys  usr
$ du -sh
5.6M  .
$ cd ..

Now, run a shell in the container! (Note that base Alpine does not have Bash, so we run /bin/sh instead.)

$ ch-run ./alpine -- /bin/sh
> pwd
/
> ls
bin    etc    lib    mnt    proc   run    srv    tmp    var
dev    home   media  opt    root   sbin   sys    usr
> cat /etc/alpine-release
3.16.3
> exit

Warning

Generally, you should avoid directory-format images on shared filesystems such as NFS and Lustre, in favor of local storage such as tmpfs and local hard disks. This will yield better performance for you and anyone else on the shared filesystem. In contrast, SquashFS images should work fine on shared filesystems.

2.5. Build from Dockerfile

The other containery way to get an image is the build operation. This interprets a recipe, usually a Dockerfile, to create an image and place it into builder storage. We can then extract the image from builder storage to a directory and run it.

Charliecloud supports arbitrary image builders. In this tutorial, we use ch-image, which comes with Charliecloud, but you can also use others, e.g. Docker or Podman. ch-image is a big deal because it is completely unprivileged. Other builders typically run as root or require setuid root helper programs; this raises a number of security questions.

We’ll write a “Hello World” Python program and put it into an image we specify with a Dockerfile. Set up a directory to work in:

$ mkdir hello.src
$ cd hello.src

Type in the following program as hello.py using your least favorite editor:

#!/usr/bin/python3

print("Hello World!")

Next, create a file called Dockerfile and type in the following recipe:

FROM almalinux:8
RUN yum -y install python36
COPY ./hello.py /
RUN chmod 755 /hello.py

These four instructions say:

  1. FROM: We are extending the almalinux:8 base image.

  2. RUN: Install the python36 RPM package, which we need for our Hello World program.

  3. COPY: Copy the file hello.py we just made to the root directory of the image. In the source argument, the path is relative to the context directory, which we’ll see more of below.

  4. RUN: Make that file executable.

Let’s build this image:

$ ch-image build -t hello -f Dockerfile .
  1. FROM almalinux:8
[...]
  4. RUN chmod 755 /hello.py
grown in 4 instructions: hello

This command says:

  1. Build (ch-image build) an image named (a.k.a. tagged) “hello” (-t hello).

  2. Use the Dockerfile called “Dockerfile” (-f Dockerfile).

  3. Use the current directory as the context directory (.).

Now, list the images ch-image knows about:

$ ch-image list
almalinux:8
hello

And run the image we just made:

$ cd ..
$ ch-convert hello hello.sqfs
$ ch-run hello.sqfs -- /hello.py
Hello World!

This time, we’ve run our application directly rather than starting an interactive shell.

2.6. Push an image

The containery way to share your images is by pushing them to a container registry. In this section, we will set up a registry on GitLab and push the hello image to that registry, then pull it back to compare.

2.6.1. Destination setup

Create a private container registry:

  1. Browse to https://gitlab.com (or any other GitLab instance).

  2. Log in. You should end up on your Projects page.

  3. Click New project then Create blank project.

  4. Name your project “test-registry”. Leave Visibility Level at Private. Click Create project. You should end up at your project’s main page.

  5. At left, choose Settings (the gear icon) → General, then Visibility, project features, permissions. Enable Container registry, then click Save changes.

  6. At left, choose Packages & Registries (the box icon) → Container registry. You should see the message “There are no container images stored for this project”.

At this point, we have a container registry set up, and we need to teach ch-image how to log into it. On gitlab.com and some other instances, you can use your GitLab password. However, GitLab has a thing called a personal access token (PAT) that can be used no matter how you log into the GitLab web app. To create one:

  1. Click on your avatar at the top right. Choose Edit Profile.

  2. At left, choose Access Tokens (the three-pin plug icon).

  3. Type in the name “registry”. Tick the boxes read_registry and write_registry. Click Create personal access token.

  4. Your PAT will be displayed at the top of the result page under Your new personal access token. Copy this string and store it somewhere safe & policy-compliant for your organization. (Also, you can revoke it at the end of the tutorial if you like.)

2.6.2. Push

We can now use ch-image push to push the image to GitLab. (Note that the tagging step you would need for Docker is unnecessary here, because we can just specify a destination reference at push time.)

You will need to substitute your GitLab username for $USER below.

When you are prompted for credentials, enter your GitLab username and copy-paste the PAT you created earlier (or enter your password).

Note

The specific GitLab path may vary depending on how your GitLab is set up. Check the Docker examples on the empty container registry page for the value you need. For example, if you put your container registry in a group called “containers”, the image reference would be gitlab.com/$USER/containers/myproj/hello:latest.

$ ch-image push hello gitlab.com:5050/$USER/myproj/hello:latest
pushing image:   hello
destination:     gitlab.com:5050/$USER/myproj/hello:latest
layer 1/1: gathering
layer 1/1: preparing
preparing metadata
starting upload
layer 1/1: bca515d: checking if already in repository

Username: $USER
Password:
layer 1/1: bca515d: not present, uploading: 139.8/139.8 MiB(100%
config: f969909: checking if already in repository
config: f969909: not present, uploading
manifest: uploading
cleaning up
done

Go back to your container registry page. You should see your image listed now!

2.6.3. Pull and compare

Let’s pull that image and see how it looks:

$ ch-image pull --auth registry.gitlab.com/$USER/myproj/hello:latest hello.2
pulling image:   gitlab.com:5050/$USER/myproj/hello:latest
destination:     hello.2
[...]
$ ch-image list
almalinux:8
hello
hello.2
$ ch-image convert hello.2 ./hello.2
$ ls ./hello.2
bin    etc    lib    mnt    proc   run    srv    tmp    var
dev    home   media  opt    root   sbin   sys    usr

2.7. MPI Hello World

In this section, we’ll build and run a simple MPI parallel program.

Image builds can be chained. Here, we’ll build a chain of four images: the official almalinux:8 image, a customized AlmaLinux 8 image, an OpenMPI image, and finally the application image.

Important: Many of the specifics in this section will vary from site to site. In that case, follow your site’s instructions instead.

2.7.1. Build base images

First, build two images using the Dockerfiles provided with Charliecloud. These two build should take about 15 minutes total, depending on the speed of your system.

Note that Charliecloud infers their names from the Dockerfile name, so we don’t need to specify -t. Also, --force enables some workarounds for tools like distribution package managers that expect to really be root.

$ ch-image build --force \
     -f /usr/local/share/doc/charliecloud/examples/Dockerfile.almalinux_8ch \
     /usr/local/share/doc/charliecloud/examples
$ ch-image build --force \
     -f /usr/local/share/doc/charliecloud/examples/Dockerfile.openmpi \
        /usr/local/share/doc/charliecloud/examples

2.7.2. Build image

Next, create a new directory for this project, and within it the following simple C program called mpihello.c. (Note the program contains a bug; consider fixing it.)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <mpi.h>

int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
   int msg, rank, rank_ct;

   MPI_Init(&argc, &argv);
   MPI_Comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &rank_ct);
   MPI_Comm_rank(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &rank);

   printf("hello from rank %d of %d\n", rank, rank_ct);

   if (rank == 0) {
      for (int i = 1; i < rank_ct; i++) {
         MPI_Send(&msg, 1, MPI_INT, i, 0, MPI_COMM_WORLD);
         printf("rank %d sent %d to rank %d\n", rank, msg, i);
      }
   } else {
      MPI_Recv(&msg, 1, MPI_INT, 0, 0, MPI_COMM_WORLD, MPI_STATUS_IGNORE);
      printf("rank %d received %d from rank 0\n", rank, msg);
   }

   MPI_Finalize();
}

Add this Dockerfile:

FROM openmpi
RUN mkdir /hello
WORKDIR /hello
COPY mpihello.c .
RUN mpicc -o mpihello mpihello.c .

(The instruction WORKDIR changes directories; the default working directory within a Dockerfile is /).

Now build. The default Dockerfile is ./Dockerfile, so we can omit -f.

$ ls
Dockerfile   mpihello.c
$ ch-image build -t mpihello
$ ch-image list
almalinux:8
almalinux_8ch
mpihello
openmpi

Finally, create a squashball image and copy it to the supercomputer:

$ ch-convert mpihello mpihello.sqfs
$ scp mpihello.sqfs super-fe:

2.7.3. Run the container

We’ll run this application interactively. One could also put similar steps in a Slurm batch script.

First, obtain a two-node allocation and load Charliecloud:

$ salloc -N2 -t 1:00:00
salloc: Granted job allocation 599518
[...]
$ module load charliecloud

Then, run the application on all cores in your allocation:

$ srun -c1 ch-run ~/mpihello.sqfs -- /hello/mpihello
hello from rank 1 of 72
rank 1 received 0 from rank 0
[...]
hello from rank 63 of 72
rank 63 received 0 from rank 0

Win!

2.8. Build cache

ch-image subcommands that create images, such as build and pull, can use a build cache to speed repeated operations. That is, an image is created by starting from the empty image and executing a sequence of instructions, largely Dockerfile instructions but also some others like “pull” and “import”. Some instructions are expensive to execute so it’s often cheaper to retrieve their results from cache instead.

Let’s set up this example by first resetting the build cache:

$ ch-image build-cache --reset
$ mkdir cache-test
$ cd cache-test

Suppose we have a Dockerfile a.df:

FROM almalinux:8
RUN sleep 2 && echo foo
RUN sleep 2 && echo bar

On our first build, we get:

$ ch-image build -t a -f a.df .
  1. FROM almalinux:8
[ ... pull chatter omitted ... ]
  2. RUN echo foo
copying image ...
foo
  3. RUN echo bar
bar
grown in 3 instructions: a

Note the dot after each instruction’s line number. This means that the instruction was executed. You can also see this in the output of the two echo commands.

But on our second build, we get:

$ ch-image build -t a -f a.df .
  1* FROM almalinux:8
  2* RUN sleep 2 && echo foo
  3* RUN sleep 2 && echo bar
copying image ...
grown in 3 instructions: a

Here, instead of being executed, each instruction’s results were retrieved from cache. Cache hit for each instruction is indicted by an asterisk (“*”) after the line number. Even for such a small and short Dockerfile, this build is noticeably faster than the first.

Let’s also try a second, slightly different Dockerfile, b.df. The first two instructions are the same, but the third is different.

FROM almalinux:8
RUN sleep 2 && echo foo
RUN sleep 2 && echo qux

Build it:

$ ch-image build -t b -f b.df .
  1* FROM almalinux:8
  2* RUN sleep 2 && echo foo
  3. RUN sleep 2 && echo qux
copying image
qux
grown in 3 instructions: b

Here, the first two instructions are hits from the first Dockerfile, but the third is a miss, so Charliecloud retrieves that state and continues building.

Finally, inspect the cache:

$ ch-image build-cache --tree
*  (b) RUN sleep 2 && echo qux
| *  (a) RUN sleep 2 && echo bar
|/
*  RUN sleep 2 && echo foo
*  (almalinux:8) PULL almalinux:8
*  (HEAD -> root) ROOT

named images:    4
state IDs:       5
commits:         5
files:         317
disk used:       3 MiB

Here there are four named images: a and b that we built, the base image almalinux:8, and the empty base of everything ROOT. Also note that a and b diverge after the last common instruction RUN sleep 2 && echo foo.

2.9. Appendices

These appendices contain further tutorials that may be enlightening but are less essential to understanding Charliecloud.

2.9.1. Namespaces with unshare(1)

unshare(1) is a shell command that comes with most new-ish Linux distributions in the util-linux package. We will use it to explore a little about how namespaces, which are the basis of containers, work.

2.9.1.1. Identifying the current namespaces

There are several kinds of namespaces, and every process is always in one namespace of each kind. Namespaces within each kind form a tree. Every namespace has an ID number, which you can see in /proc with some magic symlinks:

$ ls -l /proc/self/ns
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 cgroup -> 'cgroup:[4026531835]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 ipc -> 'ipc:[4026531839]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 mnt -> 'mnt:[4026531840]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 net -> 'net:[4026531992]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 pid -> 'pid:[4026531836]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 pid_for_children -> 'pid:[4026531836]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 user -> 'user:[4026531837]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Mar 31 16:44 uts -> 'uts:[4026531838]'

Let’s start a new shell with different user and mount namespaces. Note how the ID numbers change for these two, but not the others.

$ unshare --user --mount
> ls -l /proc/self/ns | tee inside.txt
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 cgroup -> 'cgroup:[4026531835]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 ipc -> 'ipc:[4026531839]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 mnt -> 'mnt:[4026532733]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 net -> 'net:[4026531992]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 pid -> 'pid:[4026531836]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 pid_for_children -> 'pid:[4026531836]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 user -> 'user:[4026532732]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nogroup 0 Mar 31 16:46 uts -> 'uts:[4026531838]'
> exit

These IDs are available both in the name and inode number of the magic symlink target:

$ stat -L /proc/self/ns/user
  File: /proc/self/ns/user
  Size: 0            Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   regular empty file
Device: 4h/4d        Inode: 4026531837  Links: 1
Access: (0444/-r--r--r--)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2022-12-16 10:56:54.916459868 -0700
Modify: 2022-12-16 10:56:54.916459868 -0700
Change: 2022-12-16 10:56:54.916459868 -0700
 Birth: -
$ unshare --user --mount -- stat -L /proc/self/ns/user
  File: /proc/self/ns/user
  Size: 0            Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   regular empty file
Device: 4h/4d        Inode: 4026532565  Links: 1
Access: (0444/-r--r--r--)  Uid: (65534/  nobody)   Gid: (65534/ nogroup)
Access: 2022-12-16 10:57:07.136561077 -0700
Modify: 2022-12-16 10:57:07.136561077 -0700
Change: 2022-12-16 10:57:07.136561077 -0700
 Birth: -

2.9.1.2. The user namespace

Unprivileged user namespaces let you map your effective user id (UID) to any UID inside the namespace, and your effective group ID (GID) to any GID. Let’s try it. First, who are we?

$ id
uid=1000(charlie) gid=1000(charlie)
groups=1000(charlie),24(cdrom),25(floppy),27(sudo),29(audio)

This shows our user (1000 charlie), our primary group (1000 charlie), and a bunch of supplementary groups.

Let’s start a user namespace, mapping our UID to 0 (root) and our GID to 0 (root):

$ unshare --user --map-root-user
> id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),65534(nogroup)

This shows that our UID inside the container is 0, our GID is 0, and all supplementary groups have collapsed into 65534:code:nogroup, because they are unmapped inside the namespace. (If id complains about not finding names for IDs, just ignore it.)

We are root!! Let’s try something sneaky!!!

> cat /etc/shadow
cat: /etc/shadow: Permission denied

Drat! The kernel followed the UID map outside the namespace and used that for access control; i.e., we are still acting as us, a normal unprivileged user who cannot read /etc/shadow. Something else interesting:

> ls -l /etc/shadow
-rw-r----- 1 nobody nogroup 2151 Feb 10 11:51 /etc/shadow
> exit

This shows up as nobody:nogroup because UID 0 and GID 0 outside the container are not mapped to anything inside (i.e., they are unmapped).

2.9.1.3. The mount namespace

This namespace lets us set up an independent filesystem tree. For this exercise, you will need two terminals.

In Terminal 1, set up namespaces and mount a new tmpfs over your home directory:

$ unshare --mount --user
> mount -t tmpfs none /home/charlie
mount: only root can use "--types" option

Wait! What!? The problem now is that you still need to be root inside the container to use the mount(2) system call. Try again:

$ unshare --mount --user --map-root-user
> mount -t tmpfs none /home/charlie
> mount | fgrep /home/charlie
none on /home/charlie type tmpfs (rw,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000)
> touch /home/charlie/foo
> ls /home/charlie
foo

In Terminal 2, which is not in the container, note how the mount doesn’t show up in mount output and the files you created are not present:

$ ls /home/charlie
articles.txt             flu-index.tsv           perms_test
[...]
$ mount | fgrep /home/charlie
$

Exit the container in Terminal 1:

> exit

2.9.2. Namespaces in Charliecloud

Let’s revisit the symlinks in /proc, but this time with Charliecloud:

$ ls -l /proc/self/ns
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 11:24 ipc -> ipc:[4026531839]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 11:24 mnt -> mnt:[4026531840]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 11:24 net -> net:[4026531969]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 11:24 pid -> pid:[4026531836]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 11:24 user -> user:[4026531837]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 11:24 uts -> uts:[4026531838]
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello -- ls -l /proc/self/ns
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 17:34 ipc -> ipc:[4026531839]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 17:34 mnt -> mnt:[4026532257]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 17:34 net -> net:[4026531969]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 17:34 pid -> pid:[4026531836]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 17:34 user -> user:[4026532256]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 17:34 uts -> uts:[4026531838]

The container has different mount (mnt) and user (user) namespaces, but the rest of the namespaces are shared with the host. This highlights Charliecloud’s focus on functionality (make your container run), rather than isolation (protect the host from your container).

Normally, each invocation of ch-run creates a new container, so if you have multiple simultaneous invocations, they will not share containers. In some cases this can cause problems with MPI programs. However, there is an option --join that can solve them; see the FAQ for details.

2.9.3. All you need is Bash

In this exercise, we’ll use shell commands to create minimal container image with a working copy of Bash, and that’s all. To do so, we need to set up a directory with the Bash binary, the shared libraries it uses, and a few other hooks needed by Charliecloud.

Important: Your Bash is almost certainly linked differently than described below. Use the paths from your terminal, not this tutorial. Adjust the steps below as needed. It will not work otherwise.

$ ldd /bin/bash
    linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffdafff2000)
    libtinfo.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 (0x00007f6935cb6000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f6935cb1000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f6935af0000)
    /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f6935e21000)
$ ls -l /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 May  1  2019 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 -> libc-2.28.so

The shared libraries pointed to are symlinks, so we’ll use cp -L to dereference them and copy the target files. linux-vdso.so.1 is a kernel thing, not a shared library file, so we don’t copy that.

Set up the container:

$ mkdir alluneed
$ cd alluneed
$ mkdir bin
$ mkdir dev
$ mkdir lib
$ mkdir lib64
$ mkdir lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
$ mkdir proc
$ mkdir sys
$ mkdir tmp
$ cp -pL /bin/bash ./bin
$ cp -pL /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 ./lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
$ cp -pL /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 ./lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
$ cp -pL /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 ./lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
$ cp -pL /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 ./lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
$ cd ..
$ ls -lR alluneed
./alluneed:
total 0
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 60 Mar 31 17:15 bin
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 40 Mar 31 17:26 dev
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 80 Mar 31 17:27 etc
drwxr-x--- 3 charlie charlie 60 Mar 31 17:17 lib
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 60 Mar 31 17:19 lib64
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 40 Mar 31 17:26 proc
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 40 Mar 31 17:26 sys
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 40 Mar 31 17:27 tmp

./alluneed/bin:
total 1144
-rwxr-xr-x 1 charlie charlie 1168776 Apr 17  2019 bash

./alluneed/dev:
total 0

./alluneed/lib:
total 0
drwxr-x--- 2 charlie charlie 100 Mar 31 17:19 x86_64-linux-gnu

./alluneed/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:
total 1980
-rwxr-xr-x 1 charlie charlie 1824496 May  1  2019 libc.so.6
-rw-r--r-- 1 charlie charlie   14592 May  1  2019 libdl.so.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 charlie charlie  183528 Nov  2 12:16 libtinfo.so.6

./alluneed/lib64:
total 164
-rwxr-xr-x 1 charlie charlie 165632 May  1  2019 ld-linux-x86-64.so.2

./alluneed/proc:
total 0

./alluneed/sys:
total 0

./alluneed/tmp:
total 0

Next, start a container and run /bin/bash within it. Option --no-passwd turns off some convenience features that this image isn’t prepared for.

$ ch-run --no-passwd ./alluneed -- /bin/bash
> pwd
/
> echo "hello world"
hello world
> ls /
bash: ls: command not found
> echo *
bin dev home lib lib64 proc sys tmp
> exit

It’s not very useful since the only commands we have are Bash built-ins, but it’s a container!

2.9.4. Interacting with the host

Charliecloud is not an isolation layer, so containers have full access to host resources, with a few quirks. This section demonstrates how that works.

2.9.4.1. Filesystems

Charliecloud makes host directories available inside the container using bind mounts, which is somewhat like a hard link in that it causes a file or directory to appear in multiple places in the filesystem tree, but it is a property of the running kernel rather than the filesystem.

Several host directories are always bind-mounted into the container. These include system directories such as /dev, /proc, /sys, and /tmp. Others can be requested with a command line option, e.g. --home bind-mounts the invoking user’s home directory.

Charliecloud uses recursive bind mounts, so for example if the host has a variety of sub-filesystems under /sys, as Ubuntu does, these will be available in the container as well.

In addition to these, arbitrary user-specified directories can be added using the --bind or -b switch. By default, mounts use the same path as provided from the host. In the case of directory images, which are writeable, the target mount directory will be automatically created before the container is started:

$ mkdir /var/tmp/foo0
$ echo hello > /var/tmp/foo0/bar
$ mkdir /var/tmp/foo1
$ echo world > /var/tmp/foo1/bar
$ ch-run -b /var/tmp/foo0 -b /var/tmp/foo1 /var/tmp/hello -- bash
> cat /var/tmp/foo0/bar
hello
> cat /var/tmp/foo1/bar
world

However, as SquashFS filesystems are read-only, in this case you must provide a destination that already exists, like those created under /mnt:

$ mkdir /var/tmp/foo0
$ echo hello > /var/tmp/foo0/bar
$ mkdir /var/tmp/foo1
$ echo world > /var/tmp/foo1/bar
$ ch-run -b /var/tmp/foo0 -b /var/tmp/foo1 /var/tmp/hello -- bash
ch-run[1184427]: error: can’t mkdir: /var/tmp/hello/var/tmp/foo0: Read-only file system (ch_misc.c:142 30)
$ ch-run -b /var/tmp/foo0:/mnt/0 -b /var/tmp/foo1:/mnt/1 /var/tmp/hello -- bash
> ls /mnt
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
> cat /mnt/0/bar
hello
> cat /mnt/1/bar
world

2.9.4.2. Network

Charliecloud containers share the host’s network namespace, so most network things should be the same.

However, SSH is not aware of Charliecloud containers. If you SSH to a node where Charliecloud is installed, you will get a shell on the host, not in a container, even if ssh was initiated from a container:

$ stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026531837
$ ssh localhost stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026531837
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- /bin/bash
> stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026532256
> ssh localhost stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026531837

There are several ways to SSH to a remote node and run commands inside a container. The simplest is to manually invoke ch-run in the ssh command:

$ ssh localhost ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026532256

Note

Recall that by default, each ch-run invocation creates a new container. That is, the ssh command above has not entered an existing user namespace ’2256; rather, it has re-used the namespace ID ’2256.

Another is to use the ch-ssh wrapper program, which adds ch-run to the ssh command implicitly. It takes the ch-run arguments from the environment variable CH_RUN_ARGS, making it mostly a drop-in replacement for ssh. For example:

$ export CH_RUN_ARGS="/var/tmp/hello.sqfs --"
$ ch-ssh localhost stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026532256
$ ch-ssh -t localhost /bin/bash
> stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026532256

ch-ssh is available inside containers as well, in /usr/bin via bind-mount, if the image has a dummy file at /usr/bin/ch-ssh:

$ export CH_RUN_ARGS="/var/tmp/hello.sqfs --"
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- /bin/bash
> stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026532256
> ch-ssh localhost stat -L --format='%i' /proc/self/ns/user
4026532258

This also demonstrates that ch-run does not alter most environment variables.

Warning

  1. CH_RUN_ARGS is interpreted very simply; the sole delimiter is spaces. It is not shell syntax. In particular, quotes and backslashes are not interpreted.

  2. Argument -t is required for SSH to allocate a pseudo-TTY and thus convince your shell to be interactive. In the case of Bash, otherwise you’ll get a shell that accepts commands but doesn’t print prompts, among other other issues. (Issue #2.)

A third approach may be to edit one’s shell initialization scripts to check the command line and exec(1) ch-run if appropriate. This is brittle but avoids wrapping ssh or altering its command line.

2.9.4.3. User and group IDs

Unlike Docker and some other container systems, Charliecloud tries to make the container’s users and groups look the same as the host’s. This is accomplished by bind-mounting a custom /etc/passwd and /etc/group into the container. For example:

$ id -u
901
$ whoami
charlie
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- bash
> id -u
901
> whoami
charlie

More specifically, the user namespace, when created without privileges as Charliecloud does, lets you map any container UID to your host UID. ch-run implements this with the --uid switch. So, for example, you can tell Charliecloud you want to be root, and it will tell you that you’re root:

$ ch-run --uid 0 /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- bash
> id -u
0
> whoami
root

But, as shown above, this doesn’t get you anything useful, because the container UID is mapped back to your UID on the host before permission checks are applied:

> dd if=/dev/mem of=/tmp/pwned
dd: failed to open '/dev/mem': Permission denied

This mapping also affects how users are displayed. For example, if a file is owned by you, your host UID will be mapped to your container UID, which is then looked up in /etc/passwd to determine the display name. In typical usage without --uid, this mapping is a no-op, so everything looks normal:

$ ls -nd ~
drwxr-xr-x 87 901 901 4096 Sep 28 12:12 /home/charlie
$ ls -ld ~
drwxr-xr-x 87 charlie charlie 4096 Sep 28 12:12 /home/charlie
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- bash
> ls -nd ~
drwxr-xr-x 87 901 901 4096 Sep 28 18:12 /home/charlie
> ls -ld ~
drwxr-xr-x 87 charlie charlie 4096 Sep 28 18:12 /home/charlie

But if --uid is provided, things can seem odd. For example:

$ ch-run --uid 0 /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- bash
> ls -nd /home/charlie
drwxr-xr-x 87 0 901 4096 Sep 28 18:12 /home/charlie
> ls -ld /home/charlie
drwxr-xr-x 87 root charlie 4096 Sep 28 18:12 /home/charlie

This UID mapping can contain only one pair: an arbitrary container UID to your effective UID on the host. Thus, all other users are unmapped, and they show up as nobody:

$ ls -n /tmp/foo
-rw-rw---- 1 902 902 0 Sep 28 15:40 /tmp/foo
$ ls -l /tmp/foo
-rw-rw---- 1 sig sig 0 Sep 28 15:40 /tmp/foo
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- bash
> ls -n /tmp/foo
-rw-rw---- 1 65534 65534 843 Sep 28 21:40 /tmp/foo
> ls -l /tmp/foo
-rw-rw---- 1 nobody nogroup 843 Sep 28 21:40 /tmp/foo

User namespaces have a similar mapping for GIDs, with the same limitation — exactly one arbitrary container GID maps to your effective primary GID. This can lead to some strange-looking results, because only one of your GIDs can be mapped in any given container. All the rest become nogroup:

$ id
uid=901(charlie) gid=901(charlie) groups=901(charlie),903(nerds),904(losers)
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- id
uid=901(charlie) gid=901(charlie) groups=901(charlie),65534(nogroup)
$ ch-run --gid 903 /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- id
uid=901(charlie) gid=903(nerds) groups=903(nerds),65534(nogroup)

However, this doesn’t affect access. The container process retains the same GIDs from the host perspective, and as always, the host IDs are what control access:

$ ls -l /tmp/primary /tmp/supplemental
-rw-rw---- 1 sig charlie 0 Sep 28 15:47 /tmp/primary
-rw-rw---- 1 sig nerds  0 Sep 28 15:48 /tmp/supplemental
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- bash
> cat /tmp/primary > /dev/null
> cat /tmp/supplemental > /dev/null

One area where functionality is reduced is that chgrp(1) becomes useless. Using an unmapped group or nogroup fails, and using a mapped group is a no-op because it’s mapped back to the host GID:

$ ls -l /tmp/bar
rw-rw---- 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 16:12 /tmp/bar
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- chgrp nerds /tmp/bar
chgrp: changing group of '/tmp/bar': Invalid argument
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- chgrp nogroup /tmp/bar
chgrp: changing group of '/tmp/bar': Invalid argument
$ ch-run --gid 903 /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- chgrp nerds /tmp/bar
$ ls -l /tmp/bar
-rw-rw---- 1 charlie charlie 0 Sep 28 16:12 /tmp/bar

Workarounds include chgrp(1) on the host or fastidious use of setgid directories:

$ mkdir /tmp/baz
$ chgrp nerds /tmp/baz
$ chmod 2770 /tmp/baz
$ ls -ld /tmp/baz
drwxrws--- 2 charlie nerds 40 Sep 28 16:19 /tmp/baz
$ ch-run /var/tmp/hello.sqfs -- touch /tmp/baz/foo
$ ls -l /tmp/baz/foo
-rw-rw---- 1 charlie nerds 0 Sep 28 16:21 /tmp/baz/foo

2.9.5. Apache Spark

This example is in examples/spark. Build a SquashFS image of it and upload it to your supercomputer.

2.9.5.1. Interactive

We need to first create a basic configuration for Spark, as the defaults in the Dockerfile are insufficient. For real jobs, you’ll want to also configure performance parameters such as memory use; see the documentation. First:

$ mkdir -p ~/sparkconf
$ chmod 700 ~/sparkconf

We’ll want to use the supercomputer’s high-speed network. For this example, we’ll find the Spark master’s IP manually:

$ ip -o -f inet addr show | cut -d/ -f1
1: lo    inet 127.0.0.1
2: eth0  inet 192.168.8.3
8: eth1  inet 10.8.8.3

Your site support can tell you which to use. In this case, we’ll use 10.8.8.3.

Create some configuration files. Replace [MYSECRET] with a string only you know. Edit to match your system; in particular, use local disks instead of /tmp if you have them:

$ cat > ~/sparkconf/spark-env.sh
SPARK_LOCAL_DIRS=/tmp/spark
SPARK_LOG_DIR=/tmp/spark/log
SPARK_WORKER_DIR=/tmp/spark
SPARK_LOCAL_IP=127.0.0.1
SPARK_MASTER_HOST=10.8.8.3
$ cat > ~/sparkconf/spark-defaults.conf
spark.authenticate true
spark.authenticate.secret [MYSECRET]

We can now start the Spark master:

$ ch-run -b ~/sparkconf /var/tmp/spark.sqfs -- /spark/sbin/start-master.sh

Look at the log in /tmp/spark/log to see that the master started correctly:

$ tail -7 /tmp/spark/log/*master*.out
17/02/24 22:37:21 INFO Master: Starting Spark master at spark://10.8.8.3:7077
17/02/24 22:37:21 INFO Master: Running Spark version 2.0.2
17/02/24 22:37:22 INFO Utils: Successfully started service 'MasterUI' on port 8080.
17/02/24 22:37:22 INFO MasterWebUI: Bound MasterWebUI to 127.0.0.1, and started at http://127.0.0.1:8080
17/02/24 22:37:22 INFO Utils: Successfully started service on port 6066.
17/02/24 22:37:22 INFO StandaloneRestServer: Started REST server for submitting applications on port 6066
17/02/24 22:37:22 INFO Master: I have been elected leader! New state: ALIVE

If you can run a web browser on the node, browse to http://localhost:8080 for the Spark master web interface. Because this capability varies, the tutorial does not depend on it, but it can be informative. Refresh after each key step below.

The Spark workers need to know how to reach the master. This is via a URL; you can get it from the log excerpt above, or consult the web interface. For example:

$ MASTER_URL=spark://10.8.8.3:7077

Next, start one worker on each compute node.

In this tutorial, we start the workers using srun in a way that prevents any subsequent srun invocations from running until the Spark workers exit. For our purposes here, that’s OK, but it’s a significant limitation for some jobs. (See issue #230.) Alternatives include pdsh, which is the approach we use for the Spark tests (examples/other/spark/test.bats), or a simple for loop of ssh calls. Both of these are also quite clunky and do not scale well.

$ srun sh -c "   ch-run -b ~/sparkconf /var/tmp/spark.sqfs -- \
                        spark/sbin/start-slave.sh $MASTER_URL \
              && sleep infinity" &

One of the advantages of Spark is that it’s resilient: if a worker becomes unavailable, the computation simply proceeds without it. However, this can mask issues as well. For example, this example will run perfectly fine with just one worker, or all four workers on the same node, which aren’t what we want.

Check the master log to see that the right number of workers registered:

$  fgrep worker /tmp/spark/log/*master*.out
17/02/24 22:52:24 INFO Master: Registering worker 127.0.0.1:39890 with 16 cores, 187.8 GB RAM
17/02/24 22:52:24 INFO Master: Registering worker 127.0.0.1:44735 with 16 cores, 187.8 GB RAM
17/02/24 22:52:24 INFO Master: Registering worker 127.0.0.1:22445 with 16 cores, 187.8 GB RAM
17/02/24 22:52:24 INFO Master: Registering worker 127.0.0.1:29473 with 16 cores, 187.8 GB RAM

Despite the workers calling themselves 127.0.0.1, they really are running across the allocation. (The confusion happens because of our $SPARK_LOCAL_IP setting above.) This can be verified by examining logs on each compute node. For example (note single quotes):

$ ssh 10.8.8.4 -- tail -3 '/tmp/spark/log/*worker*.out'
17/02/24 22:52:24 INFO Worker: Connecting to master 10.8.8.3:7077...
17/02/24 22:52:24 INFO TransportClientFactory: Successfully created connection to /10.8.8.3:7077 after 263 ms (216 ms spent in bootstraps)
17/02/24 22:52:24 INFO Worker: Successfully registered with master spark://10.8.8.3:7077

We can now start an interactive shell to do some Spark computing:

$ ch-run -b ~/sparkconf /var/tmp/spark.sqfs -- /spark/bin/pyspark --master $MASTER_URL

Let’s use this shell to estimate 𝜋 (this is adapted from one of the Spark examples):

>>> import operator
>>> import random
>>>
>>> def sample(p):
...    (x, y) = (random.random(), random.random())
...    return 1 if x*x + y*y < 1 else 0
...
>>> SAMPLE_CT = int(2e8)
>>> ct = sc.parallelize(xrange(0, SAMPLE_CT)) \
...        .map(sample) \
...        .reduce(operator.add)
>>> 4.0*ct/SAMPLE_CT
3.14109824

(Type Control-D to exit.)

We can also submit jobs to the Spark cluster. This one runs the same example as included with the Spark source code. (The voluminous logging output is omitted.)

$ ch-run -b ~/sparkconf /var/tmp/spark.sqfs -- \
         /spark/bin/spark-submit --master $MASTER_URL \
         /spark/examples/src/main/python/pi.py 1024
[...]
Pi is roughly 3.141211
[...]

Exit your allocation. Slurm will clean up the Spark daemons.

Success! Next, we’ll run a similar job non-interactively.

2.9.5.2. Non-interactive

We’ll re-use much of the above to run the same computation non-interactively. For brevity, the Slurm script at examples/other/spark/slurm.sh is not reproduced here.

Submit it as follows. It requires three arguments: the squashball, the image directory to unpack into, and the high-speed network interface. Again, consult your site administrators for the latter.

$ sbatch -N4 slurm.sh spark.sqfs /var/tmp ib0
Submitted batch job 86754

Output:

$ fgrep 'Pi is' slurm-86754.out
Pi is roughly 3.141393

Success! (to four significant digits)